Larry Hart

The Problem for Satirists

Malcolm Muggeridge, the British intellectual, journalist and former editor of the satirical journal Punch once lamented how difficult the work of a humorist is in the modern world. He related how the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Ramsey, at the end of a performance of Godspell “. . . rose to his feet and shouted: ‘Long Live God,’ which as I reflected at the time,” noted Muggeridge, “was like shouting, ‘Carry on eternity’ or ‘keep going infinity.’ The incident,” Muggeridge said, made a deep impression on my mind because it illustrated the basic difficulty I met with when I was editor of Punch: that the eminent so often say and do things which are infinitely more ridiculous than anything you can invent for them.” I thought of the Muggeridge anecdote again recently when I read of Harvard University’s appointment of atheist humanist Greg Epstein as its Director of Chaplains.

That gave me a mild jolt when I read it. One would think just by definition a chaplain would be someone pastorally qualified to assist religiously orientated persons in meeting the contingencies, demands, moral questions, and spiritual crises of life. And so, I thought of the Muggeridge quote along with the divinity students and their professor at Union Theological Seminary gathering up house and office plants for chapel services and asking the plants forgiveness for human maltreatment of the environment. I hope they made sure the plants were properly watered before the service; otherwise, the forgiveness of the plants might have been with some reluctance and less generous than hoped for. I also thought of the comedic episode in which Harvard University and Professor Karen King were duped into believing that they had purchased a genuine fragment of a lost manuscript supporting the claim that Jesus may have been or may perhaps have been thought to have been married. So, at first, I thought Harvard’s announcement of an atheist as Director of Chaplains was another bit of unintended self-satire. But then I tried to look at it from the point of view of Harvard academics and administrators, and I think I saw things more clearly.

Misunderstanding Religion

The explanation is in Epstein’s popular book Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. The book is something of a marketing tool, rather like Marcus Borg’s books or those of Richard Rohr but without the ambiguous metaphysics. Like them it is primarily aimed at educated, affluent, conservative Christians looking for a way out but still have the feeling they ought to be “good” and ought to do “good;” as well as progressives looking for validation that being good is enough. Consequently, Epstein reassures readers that they need not believe in God or be “religious” in order to be good people. Of course, even if Epstein’s saying so is a rather trite truism, he is correct. However, the insinuation in his title that a billion people are atheistic humanists, while a nice sales touch is a bit of an exaggeration. My own on-line research shows 450 to 500 million convinced atheists in the world (200 million of them in China), and I doubt he knows how many of them actually share his values or beliefs. It seems to me more and more that both fundamentalists and radical progressives make an awful lot of assertions that sound good but are misleading. And even where those are rather minor, they do annoy me. It is a lapse in intellectual integrity that obfuscates and misdirects. But I am starting to ramble, the real explanation behind Greg Epstein’s appointment as Director of Chaplains at Harvard is his and Harvard’s misunderstanding of religion and what Christians mean by good.

First, Epstein makes the crucial mistake made by other atheists, humanists, nominal adherents of any faith, and the nonreligious in general; namely, that religion is a set of specified beliefs and prescribed rituals, ceremonies, and practices (I am using each of these terms in its more technical sense). “The word “religion” itself originally meant something like “that which fastens, binds back or to; or ties together.” Religion is, therefore, simply whatever binds one to, connects or reconnects one to, or ties one firmly to one’s God. A Hindu, a Buddhist, a Moslem, a Jew, or a Christian in prayer is each engaged in religious practice not because there are no differences in their prayers or beliefs but because, if praying from the inside out, each is engaged in a practice meant to bind them so intimately to their Ultimate Concern (to use Tillich’s rather abstract phrase for God) that the two become one.

Now, doing good is obviously one of those classical spiritual disciplines or religious practices that helps the devotee of any of the great faith or wisdom traditions in the strengthening and deepening of this conscious contact. In the Christian faith  this is largely the very point of doing good. To state it succinctly: The object of doing good is The Good––is communion with God who alone is good. Atheistic humanism, on the other hand, seeks to do good and to be good because––well because it’s reasonable. It is actually a very optimistic philosophy which says that through the use of human intelligence, which is all we really have going for us, we can identify and follow what is good–– what is useful, beneficial, advantageous, helpful, of high or excellent quality, and what is right and virtuous.

The Measure of Good and Everything Else

The roots of humanism are usually traced back to the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras (490-420 BCE). Protagoras said, “Man is the measure of all things.” Protagoras is interpreted as having meant that the individual human being, rather than a god or an unchanging moral law, is the ultimate source of value. This was scandalous to Socrates and then to Plato, both of whom believed in an unseen reality of perfect truth, beauty, and goodness. For Plato what he called “The Good,” was the source and determinative guide to all knowledge, wisdom, truth, beauty, and virtue in the visible world of human beings. Humanistic philosophy, contrary to Socrates and Plato, considers with Protagoras human reason as the sufficient starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry, and for determining what constitutes moral attitudes and behavior. Human beings are capable of shaping their own lives and living a meaningful existence both individually and socially.

Neither Greg Epstein’s desire to be a chaplain and do good, nor Harvard’s University’s appointment of him as Director of Chaplains is really to be unexpected given their perspective as atheistic humanists that moral insight is a matter of the intellect––entirely a function of our cognitive processes. Harvard believed it was merely doing the reasonable thing––supporting something good without all the encumbering baggage of religion. However, anyone on a genuine religious or spiritual quest, or who has even minimal experience in the contemplative or prayerful life, is bound to find such a notion as amusing as a university chaplain or professor might find the fundamentalist delusion of a seven-day creation. From the religious or spiritual perspective, Harvard’s administrators and academics have ventured into a realm which they are simply not capable of comprehending. What the Rabbi and Hebrew scholar, Nahum Sarna says in his commentary Understanding Genesis (xxv) is pertinent:

The Bible scholar has to recognize the presence of a dimension not accessible to the ordinary norms of investigation. Truth is not exclusively coincident with scientific truth. After all the massive and imposing achievements of scientism have had their say, there must yet remain that elusive and indefinable, essence which lies beyond the scope and ken of the scientific method, and which is only meaningful to the ear that is receptive and attuned. It is not unreasonable to demand, surely, that an awareness of the existential human predicament be an essential requirement for understanding of the biblical message that addresses itself precisely to this predicament. Such a demand is no less scientific than to expect a musical critic not to be tone deaf, even though he may be possessed of a prodigious and expert knowledge of the mechanics of production and conversion of sound waves, the theory and techniques of composition, the history of music and the biographies of the great composers.

Every ideal of humanism is rooted in Judeo-Christian spirituality. Attempting to study moral and ethical values as only a product of human reason and imagination is like studying flowers with severed stems in a vase––not completely unproductive but severely limited. To possess ultimate values, one must be possessed by Ultimate Concern. To understand them one must have truly lived in the aura of theirJudeo-Christian meaning.

Atheistic Existentialism: A More Reasonable Alternative

Since early in my high school years, I have thought; indeed, have been thoroughly convinced, that the only logical perspective left for me, or anyone else, apart from some sort of belief in God, a Higher Power, the Ground of Being, Spirit, or whatever appellation you want to use, was existentialism. As a young teen I was greatly impressed by the realism, honesty, and courage of atheistic existentialism. If the axiom of humanism is: “Humanity is the measure of all things,” for existentialism it is, “Life is meaningless, totally contingent, and absurd.” There is nothing and no one anywhere to help, support, or save you. However, not many, if any, can actually live by that presupposition or the despair it generates. The existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger told his students that they must not go out and commit suicide after taking his class. As a philosophy atheistic existentialism was not able to live with its own intellectual conclusions and so invented a meaning to life: Life, it was decided, is meaningful if one lives “authentically.” A life is said to be authentic to the degree to which one’s actions are congruent with his or her beliefs and desires, despite external pressures to conformity. But this is, as they say, merely “whistling in the dark.” If the atheist is right, if there is no God and no resource greater than the human mind, then the original assertion of  existentialism with all its radicalism and despair holds: Life is without meaning, or purpose or, any particular dignity. Nothing you can achieve matters. Regardless of how much wealth you accumulate, how much power and control you have, what status you achieve, it is all nada! Any good you do, any social contribution you make, any compassion you express, any familial affections you have, any love or kindness you feel in the end comes to nothing––is nada!

A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“That fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
(Stephen Crane)

“I am”… I said
To no one there
And no one heard at all
Not even the chair
(Neil Diamond)

It just seems to me that for convinced atheists, existentialism rather than humanism is the more rational, moral, and courageous way––or from my Christian perspective the one most worthy of respect.

Willingness in the World as We Know It

What humanists believe, and want everyone else to believe, is that reason alone can lead to moral and ethical values. But we know almost instinctively that isn’t true. Friedrich Nietzsche, who was certainly one of the most brilliant philosophical thinkers of the last two hundred years, despised Christianity and its emphasis on virtues like humility, compassion, trust, and self-sacrificing love. He believed the teaching of these precepts made sniveling and weak slaves of the people who believed them. But he was no less disdainful of enlightenment thinking with its unwarranted confidence that reason and scientific thought  has an answer for every question of human existence.

As Nietzsche reasoned matters through he concluded that the real driving force, the fundamental motivation, and guide for every living thing was “the will to power.” It seems to me that this is the direction in which reason alone always propels us–– always drives us toward pathological power and control. Nietzsche is merely the logical conclusion of atheistic humanism, where reason itself is generally little more than an instrument in feeding the delusion of power. The will to power is neither moral nor immoral, it is amoral; and, from the perspective of every wisdom and spiritual tradition raises an issue as old as human existence and as new as now; namely, that “willingness is the essence of all spiritual progress “(Alcoholic Anonymous), whereas “blind self-will is the affliction that holds humankind in bondage” (Gerald May, Will and Spirit). Clearly, the masses of men and women in the world as we know it, regardless of the beliefs they profess, have opted, practically speaking, for willfulness over willingness. Globally, there are undoubtedly far more atheistic humanist, or just plain atheists, than what Greg Epstein has enumerated.